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Its still interesting to me that some people have very problematic first gens and others not. I'm in the later camp. My A1 has been very solid. No hard freezes, no HDCP issues, no lip synch problems, etc. Out of about 50 HD-DVDs and a dozen or SD's, it has stop twice - both on very dirty/scratched Netfix HD-DVDs. Neither time did I have to reboot. I was able to recover via chapter skipping. I've never cleaned a disc. I've successfully played the discs that people reported issues with.

I was late to the party.... my A1 is an August 2006 build. I forget what FW came loaded since I immediately flashed to 2.0 when I got it. I wonder if Toshiba made a HW engineering change mid-production resulting in improved reliability for later builds. In the dark old days of early upconverting DVD boxes (e.g. Bravo, Momitsu, etc.). we had lots of load failures, skipping, freezing, etc. We attempted to address these (with varying levels of success) by swapping out the loader, tweeking the power suppply, change cables, etc.. I should open up my A1.... I might just be surprised to find a Sony loader.... wouldn't that be ironic?

I have a March 2006 Build HD-A1. I started with FW version
1.0 and worked my way up tick by tick to version 2.1

I have had LESS problems than you. Mine has not hiccupped
once in any way.

I play HD DVDs and SD DVDs in it. Like everyone else - I
only say the LOAD times are long. But I'm so use to them
now, even that doesn't bother me any more.

My a1 has always played flawlessly. My panny s97 just died though, and I am thinking of getting a second gen player so my kids can use it. The A1 is just too silly for kids to use. Long delays and that horrible remote.
Costco has them for a good price now. Even a few movies.
Still kinda hoping for a trade-in program. Works for DVDO.
Warren.

My a1 has always played flawlessly. My panny s97 just died though, and I am thinking of getting a second gen player so my kids can use it. The A1 is just too silly for kids to use. Long delays and that horrible remote.
Costco has them for a good price now. Even a few movies.
Still kinda hoping for a trade-in program. Works for DVDO.
Warren.

Not too long ago I was hoping for a trade-in program as well. I would love to trade my XA1 for the new XA2...but let's get realistic, it ain't gonna happen.

It would break Toshiba's financial backbone to enable such a perk. The only thing that I'm slightly p.o.'ed about is the five free HD DVD offer. I bought my player just a couple months before they came up with it...so I don't get the well deserved freebies. Can't help but feel stabbed in the back on that one.

I believe that anyone who has ever purchased a brand new HD DVD player _no matter how long ago_ should be entitled to those five free movies. Hey, we were the earliest of the early adopters. We should have been permitted to reap in the rewards as well as the newbies. I just don't understand Toshiba's lack of generosity concerning this issue?

Mine's a March 06 build too - one of the first batch to hit the stores. It has been relatively problem free too with only one or two stutters and no freezes. Until last night when I played my first Netflix HD-DVD. It was "World Trade Center" and it was the worst experience I've had. It started stopping and stuttering about half way through and got to the point where I just couldn't play it. I stopped it, cleaned it (although it didn't look too dirty) and, for good measure cleaned out my persistent storage in the A1. It then played relatively problem-free for the rest of the movie.

I don't know if this was coincidence or the fact that I stopped and re-started, or the cleaning but I guess I'll see what happens with the next one.

Last night I watched Wicker Man with no freeze ups. There was a bit of pixelization at a few points during the movie.

I did NOT clean the disc or repair any scratches before viewing. The disc was in typical shape for Netflix HD DVD's.

Before 2.1 this was not possible on my A1. I could never just pop in an HD DVD out of the Netflix envelope and expect it to play through without a freeze up.

Before 2.1, even after a thorough cleaning and scratch repair, I would still experience lock ups. requiring the plug be pulled from the AC outlet to reboot.

The two movies I've watched without freeze ups are Wicker Man and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which appear to be from the same studio (I think Warner). This may or may not make a difference.

My A1 is an early build. I picked it up the day after Toshiba released the players and it's never been much of a pleasure to operate.

I think Toshiba has finally fixed the playback reliability issue, at least in my case. I'll be keeping a close eye on this player during the next several movies and if it continues playing movies without freezing up, I'll have no more serious complaints about the player.

I think I have confirmed that 2.1 has changed the audio processing for HD-DVDs. You can no longer send a DD+ soundrack via bitstream over HDMI. Previous fw versions would convert the DD+ track to DTS and send that bistream over HDMI but 2.1 won't do that - not even if you tell it to.

If you select "Auto" in the HDMI audio menu a DD+ track is always decoded in the player and sent as 96k multi channel PCM. If you select "bitstream" I don't know what is sent but its not a multi-channel track and not DTS or DD. My AVR reports a PCM stream but no discrete channels of audio (and it sounds awful).

This is a bummer for me as my AVR (Pio 84) has the LFE bug with PCM tracks. I have been avoiding the hassle of upgrading my AVR but now I may have to.

Can anyone else confirm this difference in behaviour with 2.1? Honestly, its been a long time since I've watched a lot of HD-DVDs and maybe I'm just remembering the behaviour differently...

I need some help. I just upgraded my HD-A1 to firmware 2.0. The small screen said update 2.0 the tray opened and they the screen said goodbye and the player turned off. Now when I power the player on all I get is the welcome screen and not the no disc message. Is there a way to fix this or am I screwed? The only way to power down the player is to hold the power button for ten seconds. I've already tried that a couple of times.

I need some help. I just upgraded my HD-A1 to firmware 2.0. The small screen said update 2.0 the tray opened and they the screen said goodbye and the player turned off. Now when I power the player on all I get is the welcome screen and not the no disc message. Is there a way to fix this or am I screwed? The only way to power down the player is to hold the power button for ten seconds. I've already tried that a couple of times.

Thanks.

You say:

Quote:

I just upgraded my HD-A1 to firmware 2.0.

You must have used an update CD because the current update online is version 2.3.

If all you get is the "Welcome" screen then you are unable to activate Setup.

I would recommend putting in the CD update disc once again, if you are able to open the tray, and repeat the update. Otherwise, contact Toshiba to get the player serviced.

Sorry,my HD-D1 was 2.0 and I download the 2.3 on the net and burn image on CD, I put it in asked me updated I press "YES" afte 10 minutes it auto turn off so Iturn it but Ionly get "WELLCOME" the tray can't open I think the operation SYSTEM in the internet chips was corrupt . Thanks for you reply,Iwill call Toshiba to service.

Just finished downloading firmware 2.0 through rapidshare as I (as a lot of people I saw) had trouble updating throught the internet..

I just picked up a Brand new A20 at a great price to finally be able to replace the A1.

When you open the box, there is a single sheet which would be the very first thing you encounter when opening the box and it tells you to read the manual on the internet conection and do a firmware upgrade.

So, I set the internet connection up (easy since I always leave my A1 connected to the net) BUT this upgrade really took a long TIME. I did not time it but I bet it was over an hour.

Most of the time is the dowloading of the firmware code.

With my switch to FIOS and having the optional 6 Mbit download speed, I am wondering about the internet speed choice in the menu.

For cable you get a choice of 1 Mbit and 10 Mbit.
I am 6 times faster than their 1 mbit choice but I was afraid that the transfer would generate a lot of errors and trash my brand new A20 if I chose the 10 mbit speed since I am 4 mbits slower than that settting.

Does anyone have any words of wisdom as to what to set the internet speed to in the menu if one has a 6/2 Mbit (Down/Up) internet speed.

Better yet, since most residential broadband connections are around 3 - 4 mbits,has anyone ever done a firmware upgrade with the menu set to to that 10 mbit setting? Any problems with the download?

Does anyone have any words of wisdom as to what to set the internet speed to in the menu if one has a 6/2 Mbit (Down/Up) internet speed.

Better yet, since most residential broadband connections are around 3 - 4 mbits,has anyone ever done a firmware upgrade with the menu set to to that 10 mbit setting? Any problems with the download?

Thanks

Honestly, I can't imagine that it matters much. I doubt the settings do much at all, except possibly change some minor internal settings. Setting the wrong speed won't mess anything up, but might make downloads slightly slower.

Honestly, I can't imagine that it matters much. I doubt the settings do much at all, except possibly change some minor internal settings. Setting the wrong speed won't mess anything up, but might make downloads slightly slower.

In any case, I use 10 Mb for my 8 Mb cable modem. No issues at all.

My guess is this has absolutely NO effect on updates at all. I'll bet those settings are there for the online content features that are supposed to be on some HD-DVDs. I imagine they exist so that the programmers can make those features "smart" enough to not try and stream a HD trailer over a 28k modem connection for example.

I made the mistake of running a 50 foot cable to mine and trying to do the upgrade via the internet.(10mbit+ cable connection, I regularly download programs at more than a megabyte per second).

Of course it failed, and just sat there saying DO NOT TURN OFF THE PLAYER for over 24 hours.

Eventually I just gave up, bit the bullet, and rebooted it.

Of course it wouldn't boot.

So I downloaded the CD-ROM .iso image, burned that, and I was back in business in 15 minutes. Upgrade went perfectly then. =)

Then I upgraded again yesterday, from 2.0 to 2.3 on my HD-A1.

Huge improvement.

Much faster boot times. But the part I really like is how it deals with bad discs.

Before, about 75% of the discs I got from Netflix would have a problem. Some skipping, some that fully locked up where I had to eject, reboot the player, clean the disc, and then skip to the chapter past where it locked up.

Now with 2.3 in there we watched a pretty jacked copy of Traffic from Netflix, and it did skip, but the player recovered immediately over every bad portion except one, and then I was able to chapter forward past the smegged up part and then rewind. Only lost about 30 seconds of the movie, which is 100x better than before. =)

The only problem I had was with the .zip/.iso from Toshiba. I've got a few different burning programs that I use. UltraISO refused to recognize the .iso image at all! I tried Alcohol 120%, it said 'unrecognized format' but offered to burn it anyway if I provided the sector sizes. I tried once at a sector size of 2382 or something, the HD-A1 wouldn't recognize it. Tried again at 2048 (the lowest setting) and it read and upgraded just fine.

I'd recommend that Toshiba provide a bit more instruction on how to do the burn, along with a link to a proper free .iso image burning program, there are many out there. A few screenshots would probably help those folks who are new to this stuff. I'm very experienced and I had problems, I'd hate to be a n00b trying this stuff! (Full time computer technician/geek here, 23 years experience in the field, MCSE, A+, Network+, CNE, etc).

Very happy with my 'old' HD-A1 now, bought this sucker the first day they came out and I sure don't regret it! =)

Sports? Yes! Racing and Skydiving, because other sports like tennis, football and soccer only need one ball!

Hello: TOSHIBAHD-XA1 need HELP
I just bought used TOSHIBA HD-XA1 player , I can play CD,DVD , DVD audio but can't play planet earth HD DVD diskes all I got is the still pictures and kept repeat , I press Menu or Top Menu no reponse, Can anyone know what is going on for the player, I only have this HD DVD planet Earth but I bought TRANSFORMER not receive it yet so I am not sure is the player problems or the diskes problems.
Hello:
I just bought used TOSHIBA HD-XA1 player , I can play CD,DVD , DVD audio but can't play planet earth HD DVD diskes all I got is the still pictures and kept repeat , I press Menu or Top Menu no reponse, Can anyone know what is going on for the player, I only have this HD DVD planet Earth but I bought TRANSFORMER not receive it yet so I am not sure is the player problems or the diskes problems.
My firmware is 1.4/1.09/2.0R what version is it?

I had a couple of interesting experiences this week......... well at least frustrating...

1. When playing Meet the Robinsons (SD-DVD) in my A-1 on my Mits projector there were a lot of artifacts scattered throughout the show. They seem to be especially bad in the Dino scenes. I thought perhaps it could be the resolution so I tried it at 720p (which turned out to be worse) and at 1080i. I also put the DVD in my Oppo 971 and it displayed perfectly on my wife's Vizio. Not sure in this case if it is the Toshiba that is having issues or my Mits HD1000 projector. I will take the DVD back to Utah and try it in my XA-1/InFocus 7210 combo and see if there is any difference........ just curious if anyone else had noticed this. This weekend was the first time I had any issues with this unit.

2. I attempted to play the SD-DVD Bourne Supremacy and it played normally at first and then started some digital break-ups. I pulled the disc and it looked perfect, no scratches at all. So I put it back in and after it tried to play for a short time it stopped and gave me an error message that said it could not play this disc. Has anyone seen this happen?

I am running version 2.3.

There are just two theories for successfully quarreling with a woman -- neither one works!The Barn - Use Password = AVSForum

Last time I update HD-A1 from the disk I download it but crash so this time Ilike to update from interent but I have few questions anyone help this time.
-First I set DHCP and DNS "on" and can get IP address than press "Confirm" than "OK"
-IN Proxey Setting, I have no idae how to set "Sever" "Port, User. Password..
-Should I set " NTP Server Setting and User information setting and Mac Address.
I don't damage this one so anyone can help it.

Hello:
I just called TOSHIBA in canada they will send me 2.3 Firmware disk next week.
I download the firmware from internet and burn to ca tried to update my HD-A1 but failed all I got wellcome on screen the firmware crash so I took the CPU (sold US$70 and the 1GB memory(sold $50) sold on ebay and take the rest to recycle. This is time I will wait TOSHIBA to send the disk to update it. My firmware is 1.4 I can't play Transformwe and Planet Earth HD DVDdiskes.

I have firmware 1.4 and I can play Transformers and Planet Earth on HD DVD just fine.
I did have a problem Planet Terror in SD DVD though, lots of artifacts and at one point the dvd melted. Very weird.

I know this is an old thread and am very sorry but I have just brought a tosh 5010 and it desperately needs a software update does any one still have this ? and no matter what I do I can not program the remote to my Panasonic tv any ideas thank you